My goal with my bike commute is to make the entire trip without having to put my foot on the ground. I had to unclip four times this morning, but only twice this evening. Had I been just a tad more daring I could have gotten that down to one, but that doesn’t really seem the point. Otherwise, the highlight was this little strip of road here.
They paved this in August/September of 2018 — I have photos — and again this week. The scrapped up the 2018 work on Monday, and it was a nice new ribbon today. How long does asphalt last around here?
Or, put another way, this little stretch of road fronts a Civil War era house. At this rate, it must have seen … carry the two … 36 coats of asphalt over the years.
I’m sure they had asphalt around here then. And I’m sure they treated it about the same way in those old winters as they do now: poorly.
I will not, I will not fall down the rabbit hole on this and read the entire history of asphalt, but just know I skimmed it to see how outlandish that joke was. Asphalt has been around since the Babylonians, and it was first used in the U.S. for roads in the 1870s, so not impossible, but not hardly likely for the tucked away place this was in the 19th century.
An interstate finally passed through here in 2015 or so.
But enough about construction, let’s see some destruction! I have for you, if you peer closely, an action shot of the grout removal going on at the Poplars Building. And by grout removal I mean the Poplars Building.
That’s some 60 years of stone and dust and carpet and dust and dreams falling out of that building just now. You’ll note they’ve got that screen held in place by the second crane. It comes and it goes, that screen. Seems to be protecting the parking deck. Protect the parking deck at all costs!
Sometimes they spray water on the rubble as it falls down. Some sort of safety measure, no doubt. I wonder what determines when they do and when they don’t spray.
I figure by Monday they’ll get to that protruding shaft — possibly the elevator system, I don’t know, I’ve never been in that building and it doesn’t seem safe to go exploring at this late date. If that’s what it is, I bet it comes down quickly.
The weather has been in the delightfully enjoyable 80s the last few days, which means the evenings have been a nice time to sit outside. We even had dinner outside this evening, because why not?
We were rewarded with a nice view.
We ordered Chinese. There were no fortunes in the fortune cookies.
They were just … cookies.
Let’s get back to the music! Last week I decided to start working my way through all of my old CDs when I’m in the car. Good way to mix it up. I did this a few years ago and enjoyed it, but figured, this time, that I could write about some of it. These aren’t reviews, except when they are. Mostly they’re just memories and good times.
I’m not doing this alphabetically, and not autobiographically — so I can’t tell you how I got from Deep Purple to Howling Wolf in 25 moves. And if I want to find the song “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac I have to remember that it’s in the I Never Bought It Pile. Because Fleetwood Mac was old when I was young, and people always seemed to have it on the radio, somehow. I’m doing this chronologically. Yes, I know the order in which I bought all of these things — which, apparently, impresses people. Now let’s see how many of them I’m willing to tell.
The collection crosses genres and periods in a haphazard way and there’s no large theme. It is, as I said the other day, whimsy.
Recently I finished Memory Dean’s second album, which was self-titled, but people called it the “In My Father’s House” record because of the cover art. If that sentence is a mystery, don’t worry. They’re a regional band from Georgia. A good live act. A good college band back in the day. Probably quite popular in bars. I only saw them at festivals.
A college buddy of mine basically grew up not far from them, and had followed them for some time. He gave me this record, which is a curious mix of studio and live tracks. And, if you’ll notice on the Discogs site, they refer to it as the track side and the live side. Because this was a cassette first.
In the live portion they even talk about how they’ll have tapes on sell in the back after the show! This was released in 1993 and let’s say it was produced that same year.
I found this great piece from Rick Koster, writing for the Dallas Observer, that references Memory Dean:
Rather, Memory Dean’s music is an intriguing collision of spring-break choruses, beer-fueled rhythm, and a lightly twisted lyrical sense–all of which bring to mind Flannery O’Connor and Brian Wilson harmonizing on a cypress-cloaked veranda over their morning grits.
Within that Deep South context, it’s hard to pigeonhole Memory Dean’s sound. More than just snappy choruses–there are millions of those floating around, seeking to light in listeners’ brains–the band’s songs are, on first listen, anchored in the instinctively unique vocal harmonies of co-founding guitarist-singer-songwriters Jay Memory and Bubba Dean. With naturally occurring parts that recall the low harmonies and counter-melodies of the Indigo Girls or, perhaps, Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon after a night of tequila, the fluent vocal blend lures you in just long enough for the words to hit you over the head.
[…]
Originally rivals in street-corner minstrelsy, they hooked up and began writing the sort of songs borne of two things: 1) the innate tradition of a town that gave birth to REM, the B-52s, and several other seminal ’80s “modern rock” bands, and 2) the sure knowledge that through music came liquor and sorority girls.
Koster, who wrote that in 1998 and is still working, these days at The Day, in Connecticut, overdid it — by a lot — with the Flannery O’Connor reference. And I think you sense that in the second album, even more so than Koster found it in the third album. And I think people try to sound like they overthink Flannery O’Connor because they think it makes them sound smart.
It doesn’t.
Otherwise, that piece feels spot on. Re-listening to their eponymous record, trying to figure out what it means all these decades later, I had two thoughts. First, there’s an obvious mix of bawdy lyrics that feel too clever to the authors, mixed with some surprisingly deeper material. And when Koster quotes them, they’re pointing out “Yeah, we started writing in college. We’re 30 now.”
At any rate, these days Jay Memory and Bubba Dean are a lot older than 30, and they’re still doing it a bit. There don’t seem to be an album cuts from this record online (you can’t even buy this on Amazon!) but there are a few live performances from recent years with some of these tracks.
Which brings to mind the second thing I thought. Memory Dean is the musical college companion of the entitled annoying guy with the annoying boat on Lake Lanier. Not the one that loved college, but the one that still loves it too much. He’s a little too loud. A little too tipsy. A little too much. He rents that boat. And I’d bet this crowd, with its dedicated fanbase, had examples of that guy, and his “WOOOOOOOOO” wife.
This is misnamed on YouTube. The actual song title is “Beowulf, Captain Hook & The Albatross.” See? College kids wrote that.
And while the lyrics are a little muddled in that recording, the chorus pops pretty well, and this is important. The band is at their best when they’re doing harmony. My friend said that around Georgia people called them the Indigo Boys, which naturally intrigued me.
This is “Peach State of Mind” which is a song about Georgia. This is recorded in Athens, Georgia. There will be barking from the crowd.
For some reason they sped up the tempo of the song there, compared to the record. It probably fits the bar scene better, or maybe they’re just sick of it, but that one change takes away the lament and soul of the song, which is important when you’re talking about being homesick.
I know of which I’m talking here.
This is the funniest song on the record, the crowd participation song, and one of my least favorite. I’ve sometimes wondered, when this came to mind, if they would freshen up the lyrics if they had the chance. Now I know. Yes they do. And they always pick the best low hanging fruit. They say “Rap Music Sucks,” but you don’t get here without an appreciation of the genre. And they reference “Rapper’s Delight” in an important way. It doesn’t get twisted. They don’t point out, as they do when they send up Sir Mix-A-Lot, that this is actually a good song. They just do a variation on “Rapper’s Delight.” As if, even in 1993 they were already saying that the pop version of rap is not all that it could be.
Which, for some white guys from Georgia in 1993, probably seemed prescient.
In our next installment of musical nonsense, we’re going to hear from post-peak Def Leppard. It’ll be a treat.
